LAX99LA303 · NYE KR-2
NYE KR-2 · Accident: loss of control in flight during initial climb
Event
- NTSB case
- LAX99LA303
- Event typeAccident: someone killed or seriously injured, or the aircraft substantially damaged (NTSB definition). Incident: an occurrence that affected or could have affected safety, short of that. Glossary
- Accident
- InvestigationHow far the investigation had got when the record was published: preliminary, ongoing, final or completed. Unknown where the source does not say. Glossary
- Completed
- API-reported fatalities
- 1 · all aircraft and ground
- Ground fatalities
- 0
- OperationWhat kind of flying it was, grouped by the rules it flew under: airline (US Part 121), air taxi and commuter (Part 135), general aviation (Part 91 and similar), military or government. Glossary
- General aviation
- WeatherVisual meteorological conditions (VMC): good enough to fly by looking outside. Instrument conditions (IMC): cloud or low visibility, flying by instruments. Glossary
- Visual Meteorological Cond
NYE KR-2
- Aircraft type
- Nye KR-2
- Category
- Airplane
- RegistrationThe aircraft's tail number, such as N12345 or G-ABCD. Registrations are reissued, so the same one years apart can be a different aircraft. Glossary
- N71KN
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From not recordedTo not recorded
- Aircraft age
- Not recorded
- Flight rulesThe regulations the flight operated under: in the US, Part 91 (general aviation), Part 121 (airlines), Part 135 (air taxi and commuter) and others; for flights abroad, the NTSB's coarser commercial or non-commercial code. Glossary
- Part 91: General Aviation
- Phase of flightThe stage of the flight when things started to go wrong: standing, taxi, takeoff, initial climb, en route, maneuvering, approach or landing. Glossary
- Initial climb
- First occurrenceThe single coded event the NTSB judges best describes what happened (records from 2008 on). Older records name the first occurrence in the sequence instead. Glossary
- Loss of control in flight
- Also codedOther events the NTSB coded in the sequence, such as a wire strike after a loss of power. Flight Findings uses them for its kinds of event. Glossary
- Stall/mush
- DamageDestroyed: beyond practical repair. Substantial: damage that affects the structure, performance or handling and normally needs major repair. Minor: less than that. Glossary
- Destroyed
Cause areas
- Pilot in command › Airspeed(vs), not maintained
- Pilot in command › Maneuver, abrupt
- Pilot in command › Maneuver, intentional
Approximate · Estimated position: the centre of Mariposa, CA, the place the record names. Not the accident site.
NTSB narrative
Following a local area flight the amateur-built airplane returned to the departure airport and entered the traffic pattern. Following a touch-and-go landing, the airplane climbed to about 200 feet agl over the departure end of the runway and made an abrupt right roll to nearly a 90-degree bank angle. It then turned to a northerly heading, and, as it turned, descended in a wings vertical attitude into terrain near the runway end. Three persons reported they had seen the pilot perform the steep right turn departure maneuver on previous occasions. One witness reported that the engine was operating smoothly during the touch-and-go and until impact; a second reported the engine was operating smoothly during the touch-and-go but did not recall the engine sound during the descent to impact; and a third witness reported that the engine 'sputtered' during the climb and descent to impact. The aircraft impacted in a steep nose down attitude. There was fuel spilling from the aircraft and the aircraft's flight controls were continuous at the accident site. No heavy aircraft were reported to have preceded the aircraft on the departure runway.
Probable cause
The pilot's failure to maintain an adequate airspeed margin while performing an intentional steep right bank turning maneuver, which resulted in a stall/mush and descent into terrain.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record LAX99LA303
- Event ID
- 20001212X19805
- Case number
- LAX99LA303
- Dataset
- historical-pre2008
- Source SHA-256
- 89e2df6d848e7ab3b42e7d7c7a03ff403303057a26ca04c95b3ea67201c3ce74
Source notes (4)
- Unreviewed is an editorial label, not an investigation status. API-sourced is not report-checked or human-reviewed. Explicit event totals are used without summing aircraft injury tables; onboard allocation is withheld. Unknown values remain unknown. The operation category is mapped from the NTSB-reported FAR part and has not been reviewed.
- Filled from the NTSB case API where the bulk record had no value: local date, investigation status. Values present in the bulk record are kept.
- The date is the local date; the NTSB stores the UTC date 1999-09-15.
- API snapshot SHA-256: faab91715900649401a1fbeaed141e43de7db836937a86cb2079076dfa48c519; retrieved 2026-09-20T21:48:22.365Z.